


Afternoon Out

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [23]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A practical example of guardian activity, Gen, Guardian Angels, aziraphale's barber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 10:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19990987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: Madame Tracy invites Aziraphale to lunch while Crowley's sleeping off the apocalypse.





	Afternoon Out

**Author's Note:**

> I'm American and know only slightly more about Soho than the showrunners and Mr. Gaiman know about Des Moines, which is a low gate to get over. I figure since this is an alternate universe in which the earth is only 6000 years old Soho can be a little different, too.

Aziraphale had no difficulty locating the restaurant, a storefront eatery dependent on the lunch needs of office workers and laborers; but despite sensing that she was already there, he couldn’t locate Madame Tracy until she waved from a table in an intimate corner. The sight was a visceral shock (he happened to have viscera at the moment): Madame Tracy’s ebullient aura surrounding a drab lady of retirement age. No wigs or dyes or curls; no flowing draperies or cutesy trappings of lust or colorful prints; no bold cosmetic decisions: just gray hair, a pale blouse and dark skirt, and a tinge of lipstick. Yet she beamed at him, accepted a Continental salute to both cheeks with a happy simper, and demanded: “Where’s your other half? Didn’t he want to see me?”

“I’m sure he’d be as delighted as I am,” Aziraphale assured her, “but shortly after we saw you last we were celebrating in the back room of my bookshop, and he fell asleep on my couch. Hasn’t moved since.”

“But it’s been a week! That can’t be good for him!”

“He’d scarcely slept at all for eleven years before that, you see,” Aziraphale explained, as the waitress came to take their order. He deferred to Madame Tracy (“Whatever you recommend, dear lady,”) and relieved the waitress’s aching feet and cramping uterus, as well as deflecting the beginnings of a migraine in a woman at the next table and clearing sufficient amounts of grunge out of the man with her to give his anti-smoking patch a fighting chance. The waitress carried the menus away, and Madame Tracy said: “You’re doing something right now.”

“And here I pride myself on my subtlety.” Aziraphale smiled at her, in case she thought he minded her noticing. “I like to spread a little medical relief around when I’m out and about. It makes everything so much more pleasant.”

“I _thought_ I’d been feeling better since last week! What exactly did you do while you were in there? I feel like I’ve been turned out and scrubbed up and some parts replaced, but I’d thought I was imagining it.”

“I hope you don’t think it a terrible liberty. Your bone density’s good now, and I don’t think the arthritis will trouble you much anymore. A little more snap in the tendons. I’m afraid the plaque in your veins will build up again if you don’t reduce your fat consumption, but your circulatory system is clear enough for now.” Speaking of circulatory systems, he shattered a blood clot about to cause some trouble in the old man passing the window. “I felt that was all I could do without discussing it with you, but if you’d like me to clear up the, the internal scarring, I assure you, it wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“Oh! A bit late for that, I’m afraid. I mean, not much point, at my age.”

“Not necessarily. I don’t know how much you recall of our prior acquaintance, but - I owe you a great deal. It’s a long time since I did any fertility work, but I assure you, even _that_ is not out of the question.”

Her face was a study, then, of conflicting emotions; and no wonder. One didn’t see a botched-abortion mess like hers very often in these days of legal birth control and more liberal laws, thank goodness. He’d scrupulously kept out of her memories, but the mere physical damage screamed _very young, very ignorant, very scared_. One did not handwave away scars that ran so deep through someone’s self. “I remember enough that I believe you _could_ ,” she said. “Where were you when I was 25? Or 15, for that matter?”

“Running a bookshop in Soho, with a stingy miracle budget. I’m my own entity, these days, but even so I’m afraid it’s always going to be ‘luck of the draw’ who gets a little help and who doesn’t.”

“So you don’t go out looking for people who deserve help?”

“Dear me, no! I assure you, nobody _deserves_ to suffer in these ways, so by default, _every_ sufferer deserves help. Which is impossible for me to accomplish, even had I ever been allowed to exert my full capacity in that area. In the, the longer view, humanity is and should be responsible for medical matters. If nobody is afflicted, the social and scientific challenges are less pressing and humanity’s development stifled - hard as _that_ is to care about in the middle of a plague! For you specifically, however - well! As I said. I owe you. If you want your fertility back you shall have it.”

She thought about that with the seriousness it deserved, came to a conclusion, and said: “Oh, how you go on! As if no one ever gave a gentleman a lift before!” A sly grin spread over her face. “And I don’t think my husband would take very well to becoming a father at his age.”

“Your -?“

She clapped with delight at his expression. “Yes, husband; or will be this time next week. We’ll be going to the registry office soon and we’d be ever so happy to have you and Crowley there.” She thrust her left hand over the table, to show him her ring - a homemade one but definitely an engagement ring, vibrating with surprise and commitment - made from a long pin with a glass bead head, wrapped and twisted to fit her finger.

Aziraphale felt as if the top of his head had come off. “My goodness! Not to Sgt. Shadwell?”

“Isn’t it a lark? I had to bring it up, of course. He’d never have worked up the nerve in a month of Sundays. I’ve got a bit put by, and we were hoping you two’d be able to manage a little pension for him. Even if you can’t, we should do all right. Only it’d be good for him to feel he was making a contribution, you see.”

“I, I do see. Well. Of course, a pension, that’s easily done and I’m - Crowley will be, too, or will be if I can wake him up - delighted to, to share the happy occasion with you.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “But?”

“But - are you quite, _quite_ sure this is what you _want?_ ”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s just that - he calls you things like, like Jezebel and the Whore of Babylon.”

Madame Tracy tutted. “Oh, _that_! You know what men are like!”

“Oh. Er. Actually, no. I don’t. Or women, either. Not, not as such, you know. I’ve come to know humans rather well in my, er , extended lifetime, but humans are much the same anywhere and anywhen. Men, women - what those terms mean, that’s so, so time and place dependent, isn’t it? I can undertake to comprehend, very roughly, humanity in the aggregate, or any given human being as an individual, but everything in between I must take your word for today, because tomorrow it will all be different.”

“Well - men are terrified, aren’t they? All the time. Of not measuring up. Not being tough enough; and nobody is as tough as they think they ought to be, so someone like my Rob’s constantly afraid of being found out. Plus he’s confused by anyone different from him, and the older he gets the more that includes everyone he meets. But he _wants_ to be a good man, and the only thing he can be sure that means is, protecting women and children. But his father told him women were the wellspring of evil, poor lamb. I think something awful may have happened to his mother, or she did something awful, or both. And then I confuse him even more, because I feed him when I don’t have to; and entire months have gone by when I was the only person to say a kind word to him.” She put a hand on Aziraphale’s arm. “And I’ll tell you this - every time, every single time since he moved in, some pimp tried to muscle in on my business, or a gentleman caller got unreasonable, and even the time the evangelical preacher started harassing my spiritual circles, Rob Shadwell chased them away like a terrier of righteous fury! Not that I couldn’t handle myself, but it was so nice not to have to, you can’t imagine! Mind you, he tried to scare off a few gentlemen callers that there was no call to, but if I told him it was all right he took me at my word.” She looked Aziraphale up and down with a shrewd giggle. “Besides, Whore of Babylon is no worse than Southern Pansy, and _you_ didn’t care about _that_!”

“True as far as it goes, but I’m not preparing to _marry_ him. However, I have reason to know your judgement is sound, so there’s nothing left for me to do but to wish you happy and show up on the appointed day.” Aziraphale felt mischief bubbling to the surface, and let it out in a smile. “I have to wonder, though - what exactly do you suppose he thought someone like _me_ needed from _you_ in a professional capacity?”

Madame Tracy laughed. “Oh, you mustn’t think for a minute he knows what either a whore or a pansy _does_! He knew I did things that he’d been taught were wrong, and that what you, well, what you _seem_ to be is ‘unnatural,’ whatever _that_ means, and beyond that he’s as innocent as the babe unborn. I’ll have my work cut out on my wedding night! But _I’m_ not getting any younger, and _he_ needs someone to look after him. We’ve rubbed along nearly together for some time now. It would be unkind, and lonely, to abandon him now.”

Their meal arriving at about that time, he and Madame Tracy addressed themselves to the consumption of good solid old-fashioned steak and kidney pie along with an excellent cold cider and greens; hardly the Ritz, but in its own way every bit as good at being what it was. When not devoting themselves to the food, Aziraphale asked about plans, and soon Madame Tracy was talking animatedly about the bungalow she had her eye on, in a small housing estate in Tadfield - “A hop skip and a jump from the cottage Newt’s young lady is renting. They plan to stay there together awhile, and that should make moving easier on my Rob. Plus, we can keep an eye on those children for you.”

Aziraphale paused with his fork in mid-air. “The children. Yes. Do you remember _why_ they might need an eye kept on them?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter, if I know it has to be done. And it _does_ \- doesn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.” Aziraphale ate his bite and considered, deeply, the question of what should be done, and who should do it, and how. “The truth is, though, that if any of the things I fear might happen, should happen, you wouldn’t be able to do much.”

“I can pick up a phone with the best of them. You aren’t planning on pulling up stakes any time soon, are you?”

“Even if I did, I’d take care not to lose touch with you,” said Aziraphale, and meant it. Questions of protecting the heroes of the Notacalypse aside, he hadn’t felt this attached to a human being since Oscar. Being loose in the ether had been deeply unpleasant, cold and dim. Homing in on Crowley was merely a matter of following his own emotional connections, but once his demon was dispatched to Tadfield, Aziraphale had spent what seemed a long and tedious time searching for possessable bodies. Most were sealed tight against him, some stood open like abandoned buildings or brothels; a few already had multiple occupants; and then Madame Tracy blazed like a hearth fire, surrounded by shades trying desperately to warm themselves. Such psychic gift as she had was uneducated and weakened more than strengthened by the little frauds with which she shored it up enough to make a living; but the woman herself was robust and loud and generous enough to draw stray souls to her regardless of her capacity to communicate.

With any luck neither Heaven nor Hell would have noticed her in the press of events at the airbase; but Aziraphale didn’t believe in luck. Her and Shadwell settling in Tadfield kept all the humans who might be targeted in the next few decades nicely together, where an eye could be kept upon them; and where, if Adam’s defensive “thingy” endured, they might even have a passive level of defense already in place. “I admit, I have been worrying. The, er, forces turned back at Tadfield have already attempted to retaliate against Crowley and me, once, and I fear that they might attempt something similar against the humans who did the actual work. On the one hand, Crowley and I ought to be available as defenders and advisers. On the other hand, if _we_ bought that bungalow of yours, and moved in, and took up, I don’t know, rose growing in the peaceful countryside, we’d be tempted to interfere with Adam’s life, and _that_ wouldn’t be a good thing at all. But I think that the arrangement you suggest could work well, for awhile. Not, however, without some risk to you.”

“Oh, pish! You won’t let anything happen to me.”

“I won’t if I can avoid it. You keep putting me further into your debt!”

Madame Tracy flourished her fork. “Add it onto the pension!”

They split a raspberry custard tart for dessert. Madame Tracy returned to the matter of her nuptials. “I hope Crowley can come! It’s hardly a wedding without guests. Not but what Newt and his young lady are coming for Rob, but that’s all the friends he has. I can’t very well ask any of my regular clients, in either profession. Most of my older friends have moved on one way or another. I could ask my sister, now I’m finally doing something respectable, but I don’t know.”

“I’d let her be,” declared Aziraphale. “If she only loves you when you’re respectable, that’s barely love at all. Don’t you think your spiritualist friends will be happy for you?”  
  
Madame Tracy shrugged. “They don’t know the me that’ll be getting married. Nobody does. Even _I_ don‘t know yet who Tracy Shadwell needs to be.”

“Surely you only need to be yourself.”

“It’s not that simple, dearie! Those Tadfield people, they won’t go letting their kids hang around with the likes of me unless I look harmless and grandmotherly.” She gestured at her hair and blouse. “That’s why I’ve taken myself back to basics here. Doesn’t frighten the horses.”

He hadn’t been going to say anything, but since she’d brought it up... ”I understand the need to have a persona to face the world with, best foot forward and all that, but it doesn’t do to be nondescript. You’ll never make friends with the children if you aren’t honest with them. Besides, you’ll have to be convincing as a woman who voluntarily married Sgt. Shadwell.”

“Oh, you are awful! But I _would_ like to look my best when I get married, and this isn't it. What I need is one of those makeovers.”

“Ah, now, there I can help you!” Aziraphale waved at the waitress for the cheque. “If you have time this afternoon -?”

“All the time in the world.”

Aziraphale paid and left his usual substantial tip, as well as fixing some heartburn and indigestion on his way out. Madame Tracy seemed take aback by the amount of cash he laid down. “Where does all that come from?” She asked, as they emerged into a muggy afternoon.

“Same place anything else does.” Aziraphale snagged the attention of the nearest unclaimed cab, two blocks away.

“You know you tipped Sharla more than the cost of the meal?”

“It's the exact amount she needs to get a present she wants for her niece. That will put her in a grand mood for the rest of the day, which she will spread to everyone she waits on, who in turn will be a little more pleasant to everyone they encounter. This sort of thing can have knock-on effects for days; highly economical, I assure you.”

Madame Tracy opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, and then tossed the matter over her shoulder.

“And no, it doesn’t contribute to inflation! I worked all that out centuries ago, once I grasped the theory underpinning monetary value. Crowley and I set up a reciprocal system that runs more or less automatically. It took me months to work out, and we update it whenever there’s a major currency reform somewhere. But I assure you, our financial shenanigans don’t occur on a scale that could disrupt an economy.”

“That - wasn’t one of the things I was thinking of asking,” said Madame Tracy, as the cab came along and Aziraphale hailed it. “But it’s very interesting, I’m sure. Where are we going?”

Aziraphale opened the door and bowed her into it. “To visit my barber,” he said, and gave the driver the address.

“Whatever do you need a barber for? Can’t you just “ - she wiggled her fingers around her own head.

“I suppose I can again, now. Crowley does it all the time - his miracle budget has always been enormous. But now I’ve been going to this barber every few months since the late eighteenth century, and I’m afraid they’d be hurt if I stopped coming.”

“You’ve been going to the same barber for _over 200 years_?”

“Not precisely the _same_ barber, but the place is the same and in most respects it’s the same business, in the same building. As you’ve noticed, I’m rather a large tipper. No one feels any need to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I see. Should we be having this conversation in a taxi?”

“He’s a London cabbie. He hears odder conversations than this one a dozen times before breakfast, I expect.”

“Not quite that often,” said the cabbie, in Farsi. “But I get enough fares in Soho that I know The Rules, Mr. Fell!”

“They aren’t Rules, exactly,” said Aziraphale in the same language. He remembered this cabbie, now; such a _nice_ man, devoted to his family. “I don’t make or enforce them. I don’t even know what they all _are_. But I appreciate your discretion.”

“And I appreciate my daughter finally getting her hormones.”

Aziraphale couldn’t suppress a smile. “I’m glad that’s sorted out, but that’s the NHS, no doing of mine.”

The cabbie returned the smile in the mirror. “Of course, not, sir, but thank you anyway.”

Madame Tracy listened, uncomprehending, but not impatient. “I suppose you know all the languages.”

“Only the ones in common use in England. I had to start learning them properly once my miracle budget was cut, but once I got the hang of it, I found I enjoyed it.”

When they pulled up in front of the barber shop, Madame Tracy looked a little surprised and a lot delighted. The original red and white poles still flanked the door, but someone had painted the building lavender and hung a row of colorful flags along the facade. These days the name of the business was Felicia’s Full Service Salon, written in rainbow neon inside the window pane. Within, however, it was roughly the same place it had always been: cool and dry, tile floors, tall mirrors, bright lights, clean workstations, and a busy broom sweeping up scattered locks of hair. Medical bleeding had given way to mani-pedis, wigfitting to hair extensions, and apprentices to trainees, yet this was the same place he’d first walked into in 1793, and Felicia greeted him like all the Bernards, Tonys, and Aurorae who had preceded her. “Mr. Fell! Back so soon? And who’s your friend?”

Madame Tracy and Felicia gave each other the once over as he made introductions. Felicia looked dubious, but Madame Tracy took her in - crown of braids, adam’s apple, sundress, sensible shoes, shoulder tattoo of a pastel blue/pink/white-winged angel - and turned on the high beams.

“Tracy has a bit of a problem,” Aziraphale explained. “You see, she’s lost her regular hairdresser, and she’s getting married next week, then leaving London altogether to live in Oxfordshire. I told her I knew just the people to help her through it all. You‘re not too busy, I hope?”

“For a friend of yours? Never!” Felicia’s high beams switched on, too - he’d known he could trust her to really see who she was looking at. “Why don’t we start you with a mani-pedi, ma’am, and then see where you want to go from there?”

Madame Tracy assenting to this plan with alacrity, Felicia summoned Nelly and Abhijeet, and then settled Aziraphale in the corner with a cup of coffee just the way Bernard had made it back in the beginning, in the same silver pot and the same gold-rimmed cups. Felicia took one, too, leaving the front desk to the new girl. “Soooooo,” she drawled, leaning her elbows on the little table that still stood exactly where it had always stood. “I don’t like to pry -“

“You _love_ to pry!”

She conceded the point with a graceful turn of her wrist. “I couldn’t help but notice that big black car hasn’t budged from behind your shop in a week. So in a purely professional way, I have to wonder - _did the cologne work?_ ”

“I don’t know what you mean, but it certainly didn’t _hurt_ anything. We’ve had an eventful time since I saw you last.” Might as well feed her curiosity a bit, prepare the ground for whatever changes were on their way. “That conflict of interest Crowley and I have had all along isn’t a factor anymore. And there was an - accident - in his flat, so he’s been staying with me.”

“Now, see, it shows how wrong gossip can get it! A friend of mine swore up and down he saw you and some skinny goth with a big black car having the mother of all break ups last Saturday.”

“Last Saturday? Was this _before_ or _after_ my bookshop and the M25 burned up?”

“I know, right? Last Saturday, weirdest since the beginning of the world! I’m just glad we’ve all come out of it all right.”

“So am I,” said Aziraphale. “Wasn’t your Alicia’s recital last Saturday? How did that go?”

*  
Madame Tracy found Abhijeet and Nelly to be the sweetest things, their bodies walking billboards for the salon from their perfect hair to their painted toenails. Before she knew it she was choosing among nail art patterns. Only once she was settled in the chair, with hands and feet both being lovingly attended, did Nelly - coyly looking down at her work - ask with exaggerated casualness: “So, how do you know our Mr. Fell, then?”

“Nelly! The Rules!” Abhijeet protested.

“Don’t you tell me about The Rules! My ever-so-great-granddad was the first person in Soho to cut Mr. Fell’s hair! I know The Rules better’n you know the alphabet.”

“I know, I know, Soho royalty, you are! All the same -“

“S’no rule against asking people Mr. Fell _brings in_ questions, not that they ever know anything. Normally they’re poor souls down on their luck who need a wash and brush-up for a job interview or something, and they’re stunned. But _you’re_ not like that, Miss! You’re ever so respectable. And if you tell us to mind our own business we will, but you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

Madame Tracy had tried too many things, girl and woman, to place any such blame. “I don’t know that I can add much to what you know, given that you’re his neighbors. My fiancé works for Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley. Mr. Fell showed up to one of my seances, and we hit it off. That’s all.”

She’d had plenty of time to plan this answer while Nelly defended her authority, and was pleased to see she’d landed a bombshell. Both turned lit up faces to her, and Nelly clearly only kept herself from squealing in the nick of time. “Your fiancé works for _both_ of them? But what about their Conflict of Interest?”

“Rob’s an independent contractor. But I really can’t say any more about _that_.”

They nodded in tandem. This tracked with whatever the Lore of Mr. Fell was. “And he’s _met_ Mr. Crowley?”

“We both have. Haven’t you?”

“ _Nobody_ ever sees _Mr. Crowley,_ ” said Abhijeet.

“That’s not true,” contradicted Nelly. Satisfied with the cuticles, she began applying the base polish. “That man that ran into the bookshop while it was burning had to have been him.”

“Except that the bookshop _didn’t_ burn and nothing that happened last Saturday happened, so your cousin Willy didn’t see anything or anybody.”

“It _does_ sound like something he’d do,” said Madame Tracy, not quite remembering a burning car driving up to the airbase. 

“So is Mr. Crowley as handsome as Mr. Fell says he is?” Abhijeet asked wistfully.

“No one’s _that_ handsome.” Nelly rolled her eyes.

Madame Tracy become cozily confidential. “It’s a matter of taste, isn’t it? He’s skinny and has red hair - _flaming_ red hair, if you know what I mean. My Rob calls him ‘the flash bastard,’ because he only wears black, and sunglasses all the time, and _oozes_ money. I was surprised when I met him, because Rob says he’s a hard case, but he’s ever so nice to _me_. And he makes heart eyes at Zira _through_ the glasses. It’s a treat to see!”

“That’s absolutely the same person our Willy saw,” declared Nelly. “He’ll be so pleased! Is Zira what the Z stands for?”

Madame Tracy smiled mysteriously. She was good at that.

“What on earth was Mr. Fell doing at a seance, though?” Abhijeet asked. “You wouldn’t think, you know, he’d _need_ that.”

“Oh, he just dropped in,” said Madame Tracy, which was no more than the truth. “But all that’s confidential.”

“A little gossip amongst ourselves is one thing,” said Nelly. “But we would never ask you to break The Rules.”

“He hasn’t told me any rules,” ventured Madame Tracy.

“No, he says _discretion_ , if he says anything, but it’s all the same thing.” Nelly squinted at Madame Tracy’s cuticles. “Don’t talk to Outsiders, don’t judge the company he keeps or be unkind to anyone around him, don’t ask questions outside the business at hand. The bookstore’ll be open when you need a safe place, but don’t try to buy anything and don’t take advantage.” 

“How do you know an Outsider so as not to talk to one?”

Abhijeet shrugged. “When in doubt, keep your trap shut. Coppers and news crews and bloggers, automatically, they’re _all_ Outside. Even the queer ones.”

“Mind you, some people _reek_ of Outside,” said Nelly. “There were some lurking around the bookshop last week, fair gave me the willies. One of them asked me where to find Mr. Fell and I was that scared! So I made my face blank and went: _Who? What’re you asking me for? Do I look like a bleeding policeman?_ I hope they didn’t find him.”

“Well, if they did he’s none the worse for it,” said Abhijeet, his hands firm and steady on Madame Tracy’s feet, as Aziraphale waved to the old man who’d just come in, and Felicia returned to her work station. “Can take care of himself, can’t he?”

Madame Tracy remembered how he’d fallen apart at the airbase, a hard cold desperate core fighting her for control of the Thundergun to destroy the anti-Christ and his carefully curated self in the same moment, at a loss what else to do. “Just because you can’t see damage doesn’t mean there isn’t any,” she said. “I’m glad that he has folks to look after him.”

“Only if he’ll let Us.”

“Well, but he does, doesn’t he? He comes here. He came to me.”

“Not to mention all those restaurants,” said Nelly. “And he must know, if he needs anything, he only has to let Us know what it is! That’s a Rule that goes without saying, that is.” She blew softly on the base coat. “Now, we’ll let that dry a bit, and meanwhile I’ll get Pam over here to talk about your hair.”

It was raining by the time they left, but Felicia pressed a huge rainbow-colored umbrella on them to protect Pam’s handiwork, and they walked down to a three-foot-wide storefront, where a man with a mouthful of pins was delighted to measure Madame Tracy for a skirt suit in gradations of pink and guarantee it would be ready in time for the wedding, even after she adamantly refused to let Aziraphale pay for it. (If Aziraphale and the tailor passed nonverbal signals behind her back, well, what else would you expect?) And then to a consignment store, in the shell of a former Starbucks, which just happened to have the perfect cream-colored shoes on hand to show off her new toenail art (pansies; her hands sported tiny fireworks), a cream clutch with sequins, and some rhinestone clip-on earrings she couldn’t resist. The rain started pelting down then, and they ran into a tea shop; to be escorted straight to the best seat by the window, and it was her turn to have what he recommended.

By this time Madame Tracy’s feet and lower back should have been aching, but they did not; and Aziraphale seemed suffused with well-being. Nevertheless, she began to feel a certain pressure in the atmosphere; not to get away, but to be elsewhere, soon. She didn't let it interfere with enjoying her tea. Mr. Fell was a regular here and inquired about all the staff. The waitress’s wife had a small part in the current show at the Soho Theater, so he promised to go and see her. Madame Tracy declined to accompany him on the grounds that if she didn’t get home soon to see to Shadwell’s dinner he’d dine on a packet of crisps and a roll-up and start brooding over his demonology books. The rain having stopped and left the evening cool and fresh, he started to call her a cab, but she demurred and he walked her to the nearest underground station, smiling at the multitudes they passed; and the multitudes smiled back.

“This is how you rest up, isn’t it?” Madame Tracy said. “Crowley sleeps and you - spread the love.”

“I read, too,” said Aziraphale. “After the theater, and possibly a late dinner in Chinatown, I’ll probably read for the rest of the night, if Crowley doesn’t wake. There’s a limit to how much I can engage directly with people, but that’s part of the beauty of city life, isn’t it? You pass them, you relieve their pain and ill temper, and then you move on, and they move on, to make their lovely things, their art and music and novels and plays and inventions and pies and children, and turn them loose upon the world for other people to happen upon and realize, _Oh, how wonderful_! And they keep going, and going, and going, no matter how many plagues and wars and terror-bombings happen. Even if they’re cruel to each other or get lost in themselves, they get up every day with another chance to see the beauty of the world and to smile back at it and to make something themselves.” He skipped over an uneven place in the pavement, swinging Felicia’s umbrella. “And now we’re free, like them - Crowley and I, I mean. Free to enjoy everything without reservations.”

“If he ever wakes up again!”

“He will.” The tube station hove into sight, streams of people coming and going from its mouth. “You’re sure about the Underground?”

“I need to take it tonight,” said Madame Tracy. “It’s this feeling I get sometimes, that I need to turn left instead of right, look up instead of down - and it’s never wrong. But thank you. I haven’t had a day out this nice in ages.”

“The pleasure is all mine, I assure you! Thank you so much for inviting me to lunch. Crowley will be sorry to have missed it. Shall we schedule another one, the day before the wedding, and turn Sgt. Shadwell over to Felicia?”

“I’d sooner his head not explode right before I marry him, thank you! No, Newt’s promised to get him gussied up the day before, and then take us to the estate agent’s the day after, while he’s still looking presentable.”

“No doubt that’s the best plan.” Aziraphale stopped outside the entrance to the station, repeated the cheek kisses with which he’d greeted her at lunch, and watched her descend out of sight.

Madame Tracy clutched her shopping bag to her chest to keep it safe in the crowd, but this station seemed temporarily disconnected from the mundanity of underground travel. She could see the pattern in all the people moving through here, thousands of storylines weaving in and out, and a possibility at each junction. Even the peculiar smells and flickering lights seemed almost magic. Possibly some reflected radiance from her day’s companion clung to her, for cross faces cleared when she smiled at them, and when she boarded her train a young man with a broken nose and an upside-down cross tattooed on his cheek rose to offer her a seat he had been slumped splay-legged in, taking up twice as much room as necessary and ignoring the disapproval of the commuters on either side. She thanked him. He grimaced, returning to playing Candy Crush on his phone as the doors closed and the cars swooshed away from the platform.

The active sense of Aziraphale’s influence had faded with distance by the time the girl got on; pale and sad and swiping so desperately at her phone she forgot to hang on and fell into Madame Tracy’s lap when the train started again. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a familiar voice as she scrambled upright, and Madame Tracy responded: “Patsy? No, no, how silly, Patsy’s grown. You’re one of the younger ones - Liza? Lizzie?”

“Izzy,” said the girl, the spitting image of Madame Tracy’s sister, had her sister ever put pink streaks in her hair or worn an oversized Tardis t-shirt, and had eye makeup blurred with tears. “I’m sorry - I don’t know -“

“You don’t remember me, I’m sure,” said Madame Tracy. “You haven’t seen me since that last Christmas I went to, the one when Lou and Shawn broke up over dessert and Phyllis wore that terrible pantsuit and almost no one spoke to me but I did get to hold the baby. You took the blame for eating all the fudge when really your cousin Amy ate at least as much. I’m your Great-Aunt Marjorie. What’s the matter, dear?”

Izzy’s face made a big O around the small “oh” of her mouth. “I’m, I’m all right, mostly, if I can only get some bars on the phone. Mum’s kicked me out, but one of my friends’ll give me crash space - if I can only get through -“

The phone had been through the wars, with a jagged crack across the face, the light on the end flickering erratically. Yes, _this_ was why she’d been so sure she should ride the tube! “Don’t worry about that,” said Madame Tracy. “You can charge it at my flat. My couch is perfectly comfortable.” And Izzy need never know its former professional uses.

Izzy blinked several times, hanging heavily from the strap. “You don’t even know why she kicked me out. Gran won’t have me. Why should you?”

“Because your Gran wouldn’t have _me_ either,” said Madame Tracy.

The commuter to her left departed. Izzy sank into the free seat. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’ve screwed up, so bad.”

“You don’t have to sort it out tonight,” said Madame Tracy.“It’s not the end of the world. You’ll see.”

  
-30-


End file.
